We Have Land Enough

The village of Sofiysk sits amid taiga forest, swampland, and squat volcanic hills on the banks of the Amur River in Khabarovsk Krai. Its residents are too busy hunting, fishing, and tending their vegetable gardens to give much thought to the issues preoccupying European Russia. But the impact of the war in Ukraine can be felt even here. Locals are being sent off to fight, and men half-jokingly talk about hiding out in the taiga to avoid call-up notices. People are acutely aware of the recent increases in their already high grocery prices. While the government is busy annexing new territories, Sofiysk gets by without running water or gas lines, and sometimes without electricity.

Our correspondent was there to witness the fall salmon run – the highpoint of the year in Sofiysk – and to observe the slow death of a village that was founded after Russia’s nineteenth-century assimilation of the Far East, but that has been forgotten under the Putin regime.

This story originally appeared in the publication 7x7 (Семь на семь): lr.semnasem.org/sofiysk

Sergei

The bus ride to Sofiysk from Khabarovsk takes 12 hours, with five stops along the way: opportunities to find a mobile phone signal and a bite to eat, and for the bus driver to fill up. The rest of the time you’re traveling through a wilderness of sparse larch forests, mountain streams, and taiga.  The landscape undulates as knolls descend into swamps and rise back up again.

In the Far East, the drivers like to joke: “We don’t have roads; we have a direction.” [Paraphrasing Napoleon, ironically, who reputedly said that “In Russia there are no roads, only directions.”] It’s true: you don’t see much asphalt once you leave the Khabarovsk town limits – it’s mostly gravel and pits.

At the conclusion of the 12-hour ride, the bus pulls up to a sign reading “Sofiysk 34.” A few passengers climb out and the bus continues on its way. Driving into the village “doesn’t pay.” Passengers are dropped off in the middle of the taiga, and there’s no cell signal. You have to arrange in advance for a ride into Sofiysk.

You can also reach Sofiysk on a Meteor, a high-speed passenger ship that takes almost six hours from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. But Soviet-era Meteors often break down and don’t always stop at the Sofiysk dock.

“We know that nobody needs us,” said Sergei, who spent 30 years driving timber for a logging operation. “So long as there was logging there was work, but then all the logging operations shut down and they started importing timber from China. We stuck around anyway. People can get used to anything. The main problem is that there’s no hospital. Serious cases are taken out by helicopter.”

Sergei has spent his entire life in the Far East. His father worked as a reindeer breeder in Magadan Oblast. In the 1950s, the family moved to Amur Oblast, and then to Khabarovsk Krai. The men in Sergei’s family – Far Easterners born and bred – have always hunted and fished.

The logging operation came to Sofiysk after World War II. It accounted for 45 percent of timber production in Ulch District, a sparsely populated area of Khabarovsk Krai named for the indigenous Ulch ethnic group. During this economic heyday, Sofiysk was home to a bakery, a cafeteria, and even an orphanage. In the early 2000s, there were cutbacks to the local timber industry. People left as the jobs dried up. The population of Sofiysk has dropped to approximately 600, half as many as at the start of the millennium. Abandoned houses can be identified by their overgrown yards and sagging fences.

Sergei stayed and started collecting his pension, but he hasn’t been idle. For him, hunting and fishing are neither hobbies nor a livelihood – they are the meaning of life.

“My son calls from Moscow and asks, ‘Will you be shooting geese this year?’ ‘That’s a strange question,’ I tell him. What do I live for? I’ve spent my entire life in the Far East, and if I leave here, I’ll die. The taiga, the river – that’s what gives life meaning. Whatever’s going on in Moscow – that’s not my concern. They started that war, yes. But I think that now that they’ve started it, they need to bring it to a conclusion. Our Russian guys are dying there, in that Ukraine. It better not be for nothing. We can’t know everything. That’s none of our business – big politics.”

Kostya

The season dictates people’s schedule in Sofiysk. Summer is kitchen-garden time; fall means berry picking, mushroom hunting, and fishing. Hunting is a year-round activity.

Some of what is hunted and gathered is bought by traders from Khabarovsk and Komsomol-on-Amur. Family budgets are mostly funded by the taiga, the Amur, and a few hundred square meters of cultivated land rather than paychecks from an employer. There are few employers left: the school, the childcare center, the post office, the housing and utilities service, two stores, and a private timber operation. A common refrain in Sofiysk is: “We don’t live; we subsist.”

September is the most exciting month in Sofiysk, the height of the fall fishing season, when salmon enter the Amur River from the Tatar Strait to spawn. Freelance fishermen and traders descend on Sofiysk and the other riverbank villages of Ulch District. Men deploy nets along the riverbank, and the roar of motorboats fills the air. Everyone is trying to make some money during this short season.

Why Sofiysk isn’t the capital of the Far East

At one point, Sofiysk played a major role in the lower Amur region. In the late nineteenth century, the Governor General of Eastern Siberia, Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, elevated Sofiysk to city status and had plans to build a road from here to the Pacific.

Sofiysk might well have become the center of the Far Eastern territories, which were incorporated into the Russian Empire over the course of the nineteenth century. But with a wary eye toward China, past rulers chose the village of Khabarovsk as the regional capital, since it was closer to the Russo-Chinese border. (There were tensions along the border with China throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and even after the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, the Russian Empire feared that China could try to regain lost territories.)

In the 1930s, Sofiysk was home to a military garrison. It was also a center for the Dallag Far-Eastern labor camp system, part of the Gulag system.

The village’s present population is primarily Russian, including many descendants of Dallag’s inmates, as well as military veterans, and free settlers. It also includes some members of the Ulch, Nanai, and Nivkh indigenous peoples.

“You wind up selling your fish cheap,” said Kostya. “It’s almost 800 kilometers to Khabarovsk, so you’d need a refrigerator van. Where are you going to get one? Some take in a huge catch, but that can be dangerous. It’s against the law to catch too many, a criminal offense. A license only entitles you to 10 chum salmon, as if people can control how many swim into their net. I catch them for myself, to eat. In general, it’s a gamble: sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re not. You buy a license for a particular number, and there’s no fish that day. You spent money, but now the license is expired. Then you catch some at your own risk. That’s the law,” he complains with a hint of derision as he extracts a slippery humpback salmon from his net.

Gradually, the fishermen’s conversation shifts from the catch to the partial mobilization and the fact that Russians were being called to take part in military operations in Ukraine, something people in Khabarovsk Krai learned the evening of September 21. While people living in the Moscow time zone had all day to digest the news, Far Easterners went to bed with a sense of dismay.

“Not on your life,” “If they start something here, we’ll head for the taiga,” one fisherman said, sharing his plan of action. “I’d better check out the hunting cabin – I didn’t build it for nothing. That Dersu Uzala lived his whole life in the taiga. He was tough and survived just fine.” The other fishmen laugh.

“Never thought I’d live to see the day. Now, they don’t let the people fish – the inspectors are on our backs. But I haven’t holed up in the taiga yet – not yet,” another fisherman adds.

Kostya was standing off to the side, untangling his fish. He was planning to leave the riverbank before lunch, so he wasn’t wasting time on chatter.

“Some woman died. They asked me to dig the grave.”

Kostya is about 40. He supplements his income as a gravedigger. This isn’t an official position; in Sofiysk, the term for this sort of work is kalym. [kalym – “bride price” in Turkic, but these days the term can be used for extra cash made “on the side.”] A few hours later, he returned to the riverbank in a pensive mood. Looking off into the distance, he reflected:

“How many graves have I dug at this point? I have a whole stack of handkerchiefs: they hand them out at the cemetery when they bury someone. It’s tradition. Over the past year just four people died. They hang themselves, shoot themselves. You’d think they’d leave people in peace, and now there’s this mobilization. One day I’m untangling a net with someone, and the next, I’m digging his grave. God forbid. Who needs all that?”

Toward evening the fishermen lock up their riverside huts. The riverbank is deserted for now.

Andrei

There’s a clubhouse on the banks of the Amur, not far from the fishermen’s huts. After sundown, about 20 young people gather on the steps outside. Almost all of them live in Khabarovsk, but they come back in the fall to fish.

The authorities advise the residents of Sofiysk to stay indoors after dark: in recent years, bears have been straying closer to people’s homes. But the locals are undaunted by the taiga’s proximity and the village’s dark streets (the two dozen streetlights leave many areas unilluminated). Before going out at night, locals stick Chinese flares in their pockets. They claim you can scare off any animal with them.

In September, one contract soldier returned to Sofiysk. The young people were getting together to party in his honor. Andrei (his name has been changed) was in Ukraine more than six months. Before serving, he graduated from the local high school and enrolled in a Khabarovsk technical college, but he quickly grew tired of his studies. After his service in Ukraine, at 24 he was now a combat veteran due a 3,500 ruble a month pension (approximately $55).

There were five other guys from Sofiysk who went off to fight in Ukraine. Even their families have no idea what happened to them.

Sitting on the clubhouse steps, people start to ask Andrei about his experiences. “Well, how was it?” “What’s going on there?” “Will you go back?” Andrei was pretty drunk.

“Afghanistan, Chechnya – they were f***ing child’s play by comparison. That’s what the guys who fought there told me. There was one situation: they began firing mortars at us. I had no idea what was going on, what I was supposed to be doing. Just sat there in the foxhole like an idiot and kept digging deeper. From fear. With my bare hands. Then someone grabbed me by the collar and tried to drag me out of there, but he couldn’t. I clawed at the ground, f***ing out of my mind, and there’s the whoosh of mortars and shrapnel is flying. Then I found out that it was our platoon commander who saved us, dragged us off out of harm’s way… Basically, don’t even think of going there. I can’t tell you everything: it’s not allowed. I thought I’d make some money, and I had no intention of fighting. I won’t go back. We’re f***ing everything up.

After Andrei’s monologue, the gathering sat in silence. The guys refilled their plastic cups with vodka and lemon soda. Someone turned up the music on the portable speaker.

Darkness descended, and the topic of Ukraine was put to rest.

“I’m really not allowed to say anything. They even monitor my phone,” Andrei said, explaining his reluctance to discuss the matter.

About a month later, Andrei informed his family that he was on an IL-76 military airplane about to take off from Khabarovsk for Krasnodar Krai, and from there, on to the zone of combat operations in Ukraine.

“I again wound up on the list to be sent to fight. There’s nothing I can do about it, because of the contract I signed. I only hope that by spring it will all be over. I have a bad feeling about this,” he told us.

Gena

The morning after the party, several of the guys got together in the school’s garage. Andrei’s friends, Ilya and Gena, were working on Ilya’s car, since they had free time and a garage available. In Sofiysk, everyone has a foreign used car, mostly from Japan. The locals use the affectionate nickname “Yaponka” – Russian for a Japanese woman – for their Japanese cars.

As they tinkered with the car, the conversation turned to the war in Ukraine.

“We’re dealing with such huge distances here, I can’t even bring spare parts from Khabarovsk, and nobody will deliver them,” said Ilya as he removed a worn-out power-steering fluid hose. “What do we need more land for? They’re holding referendums there, but here, there’s so much that’s undeveloped, nothing but taiga, there’s not even a cell signal.”

Gena picks up on this line of thought:

“At first I thought the military would take care of it, the pros. But then they declared a mobilization. No, I don’t agree with that, even though they won’t be drafting me.”

Gena has an outstanding conviction: a suspended sentence for catching a protected species of sturgeon. Gena’s parents are disabled: his father was injured working for the logging operation and his mother has late-stage cancer. When Gena found out about his mother’s illness, he decided to earn some money for her treatment by poaching, since the local boiler station where he worked after he dropped out of school didn’t pay much. But Gena ran into a fish conservancy agent and spent several years being investigated and tried.

People in Sofiysk were saying: “That’s it for the guy.” “He’ll never come back.” But he did. He didn’t make any money, didn’t help his mother with her treatment, but at least now, since the fighting in Ukraine began, he could say: “They won’t be drafting me.”

Yelena

Sofiysk’s local government is headed by Gennady Voropayev, who in the late 1980s graduated from the Khabarovsk Higher School of the [Communist] Party. He has held this post for 22 years – longer than Vladimir Putin has been president of the Russian Federation.

Over the course of those two decades, no new businesses have been opened in Sofiysk, and with every passing year, the village sinks further into decline. Yelena Kosinskaya tried to reverse this trend.

She is 56 and has lived in the village since she was eight. She has spent most of her life working at the local childcare center, ultimately rising to the post of director. In 2014, she was elected to the village council and quickly found evidence suggesting that 15 million rubles had been embezzled from the district budget. The money was allocated to fix roads, but no repairs had been made.

Kosinskaya began writing to the prosecutor and government of Khabarovsk Krai. She found journalists to write about the situation. And then the threats began.

“In late 2019, I wrote to our governor, Sergei Furgal [In 2020, Furgal was arrested based on alleged involvement in organizing two murders and a kidnapping in 2004-05.], about problems faced by the villages of the lower Amur: rampant unemployment, a lack of essential medicines, meager wages, and inaction by local authorities.* My letter was returned to the district, so the district head could respond. And it all started again. I was given the runaround for four months; they couldn’t figure out how to fire me.”

During that time, in parallel with working and serving on the council, she was studying at the Omsk State Academy, from which she ultimately earned a college degree.

“I was fired for being unqualified for the position. Directors are supposed to have a college degree, and at the time I only had a specialized high school degree,” she told us as she washed dishes in a metal basin.

Kosinskaya has her own house. It is a nice one by Sofiysk standards, with exterior siding and double-paned windows. However, like all the houses in the village, hers has no running water. The housing and utilities service brings drums of water from a local well. Every house has several drums set up in the yard.

Sofiysk also lacks central heating and gas. Homes are heated with firewood. The poorer residents scavenge wood from abandoned buildings. If you order your wood from a local supplier, it costs roughly 40,000 rubles ($600) to heat an average house through the winter.

Oil and gas pipelines run just ten kilometers from Sofiysk. The oil pipeline was built by thousands of Dallag labor camp prisoners who populated Khabarovsk Krai in the 1930s. It was created to carry oil from Sakhalin. The Gazprom gas pipeline was built in 2012. The pipelines disappear into the taiga. The locals have no idea where they lead.

Every street in Sofiysk is lined by wooden poles connected by wires: the local electrical supply network. In winter, the powerful Far Eastern winds periodically topple the rotting poles, leaving the village without power. People sometimes survive without electricity for weeks or even months. And if there’s a breakdown at the local diesel power station, a sign is posted at one of the local stores showing the blackout schedule. The people of Sofiysk must submit to this schedule. It dictates when they can watch television and fix dinner.

Yelena Kosinskaya gives the impression of a calm and reasonable person. Perhaps that’s the sort of character that the challenges of the taiga tend to build.

After she was fired, the locals stopped turning to the authorities to solve their problems.

“Because they realized: if they want to fire someone, they’ll fire them,” Kosinskaya said. “If you’re stuck in the village without work, you’re essentially left with no means of survival. People are forced to hold their tongues. People are afraid. The situation gets worse with every year. In February, they stopped delivering the medicines they’re obligated to provide to regional and federal clients, and prices, which were already high, shot up in the store.”

Food is brought to Sofiysk from Khabarovsk twice a month. The fruit sells out quickly, despite the high price. People have almost no choice. “We buy what they bring.”

Because of the distance it has to travel, food costs several times more than it does in Central Russia. If it didn’t, there would be no incentive for suppliers to drive 800 kilometers into the taiga. Even cigarettes, which are usually sold by the pack, cost about a third more in Sofiysk.

“I don’t understand why we’re fighting in Ukraine,” Kosinskaya said as she finished washing the dishes. “Must mean we’ve solved all our own problems. My husband and I often argue about that. It’s a difficult subject. And I tell my children, ‘Move away while you’re young.’”

It’s been a year since Kosinskaya earned her degree. She didn’t run for reelection to the council. Since being fired from the childcare center, she washes floors at the local clinic. It’s the only job she was able to find.

Georgy

Leaving Sofiysk is no simple matter. The local gas station is often out of gas. Once upon a time, there was a huge petroleum storage facility here serving the state-run timber operation, but then it was sold and went private. The locals complain about the quality of fuel, but they buy it anyway. Some drive 94 kilometers to De-Kastri. There, the fuel is of much higher quality.

“They’ve hired metalworkers to cut up the fuel tanks,” said Georgy Konovalov, a station attendant, nodding toward some huge storage tanks. “Now, they’re going to take everything away and close up shop.”

Konovalov has been working at the filling station for about a year. Before that he was principal of the local school, where he taught history and social studies. Leaving was his own choice.

“They were cutting back at the school. They want to eliminate the older grades and just go up to ninth,” he said. “They’re right – what do cattle need an education for? I tried to keep things in place, but they kicked me out. I got a job here – why sit at home? Here at the filling station I’m more or less an attendant, a guard: I keep the stove in the guard house going, feed the dog and the cat. In winter I fish and go cross-country skiing.”

Konovalov dunks a tea bag into a cup of boiled water. The cat is meowing at his feet. It’s warm in the guardhouse. There’s a ledger on the desk and a sofa next to it. The attendant settles on the sofa and continues his story.

“In the past, we needed local agriculture, to feed the garrison that was here. Then the timber operations started up and required a certain infrastructure: childcare centers, schools, hospitals. Now everything’s changed. There is some logging, but it’s on a rotational basis: they come in, cut trees, and they’re gone. The Far East, especially here, is a like a warehouse. We’ve got the world’s largest deposits of gold and copper – that’s in the village of Malnyzh in Nanai District [much farther south than Sofiysk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur]. But the trend is that small villages are fading away on their own. Guys tend to pick up short-term jobs; they’re always leaving. And why would anyone want to set up anything permanent? Then you have to pay salaries. So they’ve shut everything the hell down, just left the temporary jobs. Unfortunately, the interests of the people and the state don’t coincide.”

Konovalov said that these divergent interests are reflected in what’s currently happening in Ukraine.

“We have to help those people who are caught up in this conflict [as hostages of the Kiev regime]. I believe that Russia will put an end to this. How does Taras Bulba end? ‘I gave you life, and I will take it away,’” Georgy commented as he finished his tea.

He interrupts his story because a car has pulled into the filling station. He leaves the guard house to inform the driver that there’s no gas.

Fall fishing ends in early October. Sofiysk empties out. Nothing is left but faint signs of life in the village: the barking of dogs, the smoke from chimneys, the sound of wood being chopped.

This coming summer, 2023, Sofiysk will mark its 165th anniversary. That’s young by Russian standards, but the village has already run its course. None of the locals think much about the future – they’re just glad there was a good catch this year and that the vegetable patches yielded plentiful crops. They’ll stick around to see another year, until the anniversary for sure.

For Russia, the Far East has become a natural resource colony. It is a huge proving ground, where people struggle for the right to live. Every kilometer of taiga say to people: “Annexing is one thing; cultivating is quite another.”